Low DPS at the start of levelling?

Kind of a stupid question since I'll out level the content pretty quick but here goes:

I started a DK alt the other day and I noticed once I got into dungeons that my dps on single target was markedly lower than other classes.

They were putting out around 1k dps single target and I was doing closer to 500-600 even when I was hitting every GCD and following rotation as closely as possible (my AoE dps varied from 1-3k so that wasn't really an issue).

Now this might just be a levelling thing but yeah it kind of annoyed me since I levelled a hunter recently and had no issues doubling the dps of most of the people I was playing with for fairly low effort, and suddenly I'm working twice as hard for half the pay off.

For reference this was at level 60-62 and I was playing as frost DPS.

It also might be worth mentioning I was using two leather heirlooms (helm/pants) and the agi heirloom cloak.

TL;DR is frost DK kind of mediocre at lower levels, are the leather pieces dragging me down or am I screwing up something majorly which is contributing to the low output?

Blood boil"s damage coeficient is retarded at low levels so yes you'll be ahead spamming blood boil as DPS in blood spec on a single target.

Originally Posted by cutterx2202
Stop complaining to solve your lack of ability, and start reading and practicing to gain ability. Stop trying to bring people down to your level instead of striving to raise yours.

Right now, Blood do more DPS than the other 2 specs, Rune Strike and Blood Boil hits are so high, and remenber, when you are leveling, mostly you're doing aoe, not single target, so try blood boil. In Bosses fights, well, fights don't last enough to try a perfection rotation, its more like hitting hard quickly and you'll be ok

Blood boil"s damage coeficient is retarded at low levels so yes you'll be ahead spamming blood boil as DPS in blood spec on a single target.

Exactly this. Its the only way to actually do good too, considering you have like no runes ever untill you get the lvl 75 talents. You can try it for yourself, blood boil will hit harder singletarget than heart strike does.

Vengeance
Requires Death Knight (Blood)
Requires level 55
Each time you take damage, you gain 2% of the unmitigated damage taken as attack power for 20 sec.

With the changes to presences they are fairly straight forward for the spec you're using (aside from PvP)... Blood spec is great for leveling in and out of instances. You should always be top DPS as a tank, while leveling, for the most part.

Vengeance
Requires Death Knight (Blood)
Requires level 55
Each time you take damage, you gain 2% of the unmitigated damage taken as attack power for 20 sec.

With the changes to presences they are fairly straight forward for the spec you're using (aside from PvP)... Blood spec is great for leveling in and out of instances. You should always be top DPS as a tank, while leveling, for the most part.

Yeah I understand what Vengeance does (pally tank here) just was curious if it was tied to Blood Presence since that gives the other DK tanks basically all the same tools to tank as blood has except a bit of mitigation and taunt.

Still, good to know its tied to the spec and not the presence (although realistically I probably coulda logic'd that one out since tying it to the presence would be weird).

Interesting to hear that Blood Pres is good for solo questing as well, thanks for that.

Yeah Just go blood. This is why I don't mind seeing Blood dps players in my dungeons at low levels (provided they're not in blood presence). Blood Boil does retarded damage at low levels. I remember dueling one on my pally, and 1 Blood Boil took away more than half my health (even with heirlooms on).

Until 75 things are going to be really slow, since you don't have access to the Rune Regeneration talents (Runic Empowerment, Runic Corruption, or Blood Tap) -- The class doesn't really function that well without them. Once you hit 75 your DPS will come up by far and you won't have to rely on the gimmick of Blood Boil to keep up.

Yeah I understand what Vengeance does (pally tank here) just was curious if it was tied to Blood Presence since that gives the other DK tanks basically all the same tools to tank as blood has except a bit of mitigation and taunt.

Still, good to know its tied to the spec and not the presence (although realistically I probably coulda logic'd that one out since tying it to the presence would be weird).

Interesting to hear that Blood Pres is good for solo questing as well, thanks for that.

Sorry if my original post wasn't clear. Also, I didn't mean to imply you had no concept of vengeance just that it was in fact Blood specific.

On the topic of presences; Blizzard simplified/optimized them to the spec you play (which I lightly touched on above) with only certain situations or PvP being a time you'd play out of the "optimized" presence. Example: Prior to MoP, it was common to DPS as Frost in Unholy presence, no longer the case. Blood spec, you can just stick to Blood, even while leveling.

Like the above posters have mentioned, Blood is great at questing. Need to kill "x" number of tigers? Pull them all. Blood spec in DPS gear is awesome, you can even tank 5 mans (prior to 90) in DPS gear. As a note: Frost is great for "AoE" questing too, with glyph of Dark Succor (for the bonus healing).

I've leveled my DK to 74 now and I've been playing as a Frost/UH. UH works well in dungeons after you hit 70. I basically dominate the dps charts. Doing 5-8k dps in packs and 2.8-3.4k dps on bosses depending if I need to change targets often. Waiting for the 75lvl rune regen talents, which will probably increase my dps even further. I've got the blood boil pestilence talent on first talent tier and my basic rotation on AOE packs = apply diseases, D&D, blood boil and then Scourge Strike/Death Coil/Dark Transformation at 5 stacks till new blood boil. Single target works pretty much the same but Blood Boil is the filler instead of main ability. Blood boil with the disease spreading on UH is pretty awesome since UH:s diseases do so much more damage compared to other specks. UH works quite well on questing too if you AOE pull, but I prefer using Frost on questing. Haven't used Blood after 70 so don't know about it.